In an attempt to insert into Impire too many ideas and different features inspired by other games in the genre, Cyanide Montreal has created a product characterized by an extremely limiting gameplay, ironically making the game even more repetitive than it would have been with a simpler formula.

The interface is a cumbersome mess, as if Cyanide Montreal, the game’s developer, had never played a real-time strategy game before. The offensive and defensive components of the missions don’t complement each other; they just get in each other’s way and disrupt each other. It takes a half hour or more to build up your dungeon so you can go on the offensive, but this part of the game is nearly identical for each mission, which is tedious.

Impire does have an interesting approach to resources, with its above world raids (it’s a 2D map) and points system of dungeon upgrades based on performance but, ultimately, Impire is flawed, conceptually and technically.

I don't see much sense in buying Impire. The game is mediocre and has no redeeming qualities in its multiplayer mode (the only thing you do is bring more and more monsters to the battle). Why such a "high" grade then? Impire can be quite fun in small doses. The single player campaign is pleasant and the game looks nice (with the exception of cut-scenes), but that's pretty much it. If you need a good Dungeon Keeper-like game, you should go and play Dungeon Keeper 2.

Impire is an RTS dressed up in the clothes of an dungeon builder. Even though the initial presentation is appealing, the lack of interesting mechanics sets it up for rather monotone and dull game-play in the long run.

I wish I had nicer things to say about Impire, but my disappointment with its failure to turn any of its concepts into interesting interactive gameplay is total. As cool as the concept is, gamers interested in building an underground lair and tormenting would-be heroes are still stuck waiting for a worthy successor to 1997's Dungeon Keeper.

Building a dungeon and fighting for world domination as a bad guy: familiar territory that doesn’t bore quickly. But Impire lacks focus, feels messy and requires lots of patience. Because of this, playing it often feels like a chore. Impire has a bunch of good ideas, of which none are well developed.

It does nothing particularly well – in fact, a number of mechanics are an active detriment to the experience, like food – but it also doesn’t do anything particularly poorly. The best way to describe it is tepid.

Impire is not the Dungeon Keeper clone you might have come to expect. It's a micro-management squad based game, kind of clunky and repetitive, but still well-written and funny. If you have time to enjoy the solo campaign, why not, but waiting for a Steam promotion wouldn't be ill-advised.

Impire got old even before it came out, and its dated visuals are not the only problem. As someone who played Dwarf Fortress a lot, I can get used to poor quality graphics, but drab gameplay, forced jokes, buggy multiplayer and complete lack of fresh ideas will be the downfall of Impire.

It won’t scratch the Dungeon Keeper itch because it has no ecosystem – it’s an RTS rather than a dungeon-building game. But it also won’t scratch the RTS itch because it’s repetitive, offers little strategic challenge, and is deeply, deeply tedious.

All the potential was wasted on missions that amount to simple copy-and-paste tactics punctuated by jokes that are an acquired taste, to say the least. It's stitched together with big ideas and interesting concepts, but it never even comes close to being the sum of its parts.

It's repetitive, disposable and artificially inflated. Most of all it's frustrating: frustrating because of the poor execution of a promising concept and because it's nowhere near the game that it could have been.

While it's still easing you into the pain to come during the first couple of hours, you can catch a glimpse of the good game this should be in the absence of draconian micromanagement and unfulling base building. It's especially apparent in the multiplayer mode (provided you can finish without a crash), where you might even have fun battling it out in Team Deathmatch or Capture the Flag (er, dragon) in the shared dungeon that smartly keeps each player's base inviolate.

There are good ideas in this attempt at a dungeon simulator, but the execution is poor. The constant micro management becomes a chore, and the lack of any meaningful interaction with both units and dungeon ensures the highs are few and far between.

The mission structure is repetitive, the basic gameplay is far from engaging, and I might even have fallen asleep at some point while playing. Impire is monotonous, banal and boring, and I can’t wait to forget about it in the coming weeks.

I have actually played the game and and after seeing the delusional reviews here, I felt compelled to chime in. (8.3? Really?) TheI have actually played the game and and after seeing the delusional reviews here, I felt compelled to chime in. (8.3? Really?) The atmosphere in the game is fine, and the humor, while a bit simple, is also fine. The real problem is the game-play. It isn't fun. In fact, it can be rather tedious. Basically the game consists of 5 parts. Building your dungeon, defending your dungeon from heroes, adventuring, raiding, and maintenance. No, it is not as exciting as it sounds.

Building your dungeon is basically rotating and dropping a pre-sized room next to a corridor. Layout is unimportant because you generally teleport your units everywhere. Other than perhaps a cluster of kitchen's as you will spend a fair bit of time feeding your minions. It is generally unsatisfying and happens at a fairly slow pace. It feels more like the base building in a RTS, you do it just to get the buildings deployed to unlock functionality, not because you are actually designing a base.

Defending your dungeon, now here is one of the tedious parts. Every couple of minutes, 2-4 (depending on stage of the game) ladders will randomly appear scattered within your dungeon. If you don't destroy them, a group of heroes will come out of one of them roughly twenty seconds later. You can setup patrols to destroy the ladders, but you rarely bother, because if you do, the heroes will simply come in through the dungeon entrance and attack your base anyway. So you teleport your squads back and attack the ladders and then teleport them to the entrance to attack the heroes. Then you send your minions to feed, and teleport them back to where they were before you were attacked.

Adventuring is wandering around a too-dark area doing simple quests with mediocre combat. It is the best part of the game, and you can't enjoy it because you have to stop and teleport your minions back every couple of minutes to deal with the heroes. Or feed your minions.

Raiding. Basically, you switch to a world map with a couple dozen locations on the map. There are 3 different types, each gives a different resource, and sometimes quest specific locations as well. But all you do is right click on one and select a single squad to send. Your squad leaves the dungeon, and comes back a minute later and you get resources, and possibly lose units. That is it. The quest ones are basically the same, just with a quest update thrown in. There is no real interactivity. It adds a little something to the game, but nothing to write home about.

Maintenance. Ugh. You have to send your minions to feed. Often. When you lose a unit, you have to go through a couple of screens to create a replacement, send him to training to level two, go to a squad menu, add him to a squad, purchase upgrades for each unit separately (basically armor/weapons lvl 1-3, no real customization) and then send the squad for feeding. You can have replacements on hand, but still have to do all the same micromanagement.

The UI has issues and needs to be streamlined, and there is too much micromanagement. Like you can tell an imp to repair a building, and he will, then just sit there. You have to wait until the repair is complete to then manually request an Imp go to work in said building. The same with ladders. Unless you set squads on patrol mode (which you generally don't want as they will wander off) when you teleport a squad next to an invading ladder, you have to manually select the squad you just sent, and manually tell him to destroy the ladder he is basically standing on top of. When you have to destroy 4 ladders, it is teleport, select, target ladder, repeat. 4 times. Every couple of minutes.

Beyond the tedium, there is no real tactical depth and combat is kinda boring. Squads (which consist of 4 units) get bonuses depending on unit composition and level, but only with 4 different units. So, for example, if one of your bonuses is extra healing and you replace a DPS unit with a second healer, you lose the healing bonus. Odd logic. So the game encourages you to throw together squads from random groups of units. And combat is basically swarming the enemy with all your squads. There is no strategic reason not to, as you can instantly teleport your squads to wherever you want them. (albeit one at a time, as the UI has no streamlining) There are also reports of a few bugs, though I have not personally encountered any. To be fair, the developers have been active on Steam forums and I suspect the bugs will actually be fixed rather quickly. They have also promised to address some of of the other game issues, like the UI and constant need to feed your minions. With a couple of patches, they could get the game to a 6-7 rating, which is respectable for a $20 game in a genre with few other options. But as of right now, playing the game is a chore.…Full Review »

A mix between Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius, with none of the features that made them games classic.

So many things need to be said aboutA mix between Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius, with none of the features that made them games classic.

So many things need to be said about this game. Firstly, the core idea of the game and its humour are interesting, but really fail to entertain. Textures are fairly tacky, and the voice acting is fairly bad, but that isn't what makes this game awful. The core mechanics seem to defy the genre of the game. Room placement is static and unchangable, you only choose where to place them, which would still matter if enemy heroes came from set directions or were predictable in any way, or at very least, you'd need to create an efficient interlinking of rooms in order to have your minions perform well. This is not the case with Impire, units can be teleported anywhere at will (you rely on this pretty much 100% of the time) and to make matters worse, ladders spawn semi-randomly into your dungeon, which heroes use to get into your dungeon if not taken out. This renders any and all strategy in relation to base building completely pointless, given the heroes ability to get where-ever they like, and your ability to teleport. After removing the strategy and simulation aspect of any reasonable game of this kind, they feel it necessary to fill the game with nonsensical amounts of impractical micromanagement. The squad screen (the primary way you will group and control your units) is completely separate from your unit creation menu, so if your squad has suffered casualties, you must look at the squad menu, memorise what unit has died so that you can replace it, close that menu, change to the spawn menu, wait for the unit to spawn, then back to the squad menu and drag it into place. On the topic of the units, it is incredibly imbalanced. The scout for instance, relies on range to do average-high damage, but you'll find more often the enemy will run past your other units and kill him straight away. On top of that, he isn't created with the same type of resource most other units are created (mushrooms, which are generated via the mushroom room, a non-buildable room that produces mushrooms at a slow rate) which makes his death a useless waste of resource.

The tutorial does not inform you of anything important, and is a drag to go through as you watch your workers do meaningless tasks until the game decides to move the tutorial on, and on top of that, the guardian at the end of the level is very difficult, and you are not told in any way how to defeat him. The controls of the squads make it extremely difficult to issue precise commands, often your units will just disregard them anyway. And finally to leave that bitter taste in your mouth, the game will crash often, with stages lasting a rather long time depending on whether or not you do the side quests (which seem to have no real reward) so you make it through an hour and a half of this tedious game only to have it crash on you and force you to start from the beginning. No thanks. Do not buy this…Full Review »